by Sue Wilson
Although she was well out of his reach, Thea instinctively stepped back, away from the circle of fury around him. The bedclothes landed in a pile at her feet. She was vaguely aware of a servant bearing a tray laden with food and drink nudging the door open with her hip-
"Leave us!" the Sheriff bellowed.
-And bowing low as she backed out the door.
"And tell that miserable excuse of a guard I will have no further intrusions!" He pulled his dagger from its sheath at his waist and hurled it, somersaulting, through the air. It splintered into the closing door, embedded halfway to the hilt.
Thea froze, stunned, and stared at the Sheriff in silence. Was he bent on annihilating all around him with his temper, or just himself?
Nottingham grabbed a flagon from the bedside table and tilted it to his lips. Burgundy wine coursed down his beard and neck, then forked, like twin rivers, to stream down his chest. Blood dripped through the bandage, and Thea knew he would do untold harm to his wound were he not stopped. She followed him to the alcove, reached out, and laid her hand on his forearm.
"I will need the wine for your wound."
He stopped in mid-swallow, regarding her with a baleful eye. "What price privacy, do you think? Or is that a commodity the Sheriff cannot afford?"
Suddenly his body sagged, as if he'd spent the last of his energy on his useless rage and could no longer stand on his own. Thea rescued the flagon from his fingers as he collapsed on the bed's edge, elbows braced on his knees, head buried in his hands. His fingers raked through his mane of hair and dug into his scalp.
It was odd seeing him depleted, stripped of the stubborn defensiveness he believed to be strength, odder still feeling the flood of sympathy that stirred within her. "They're worried. Your servants-your wife-"
He flashed her a look of irritated distaste that was an eloquent contradiction. "That was no wife," he said acidly. "Damn woman! Worse than a stray cat one mistakenly feeds-forever underfoot. Likely she imagined herself a welcoming sight, curled and purring contentedly in a place that is not hers. Seeing herself as a cure for what ails me-a lustful woman to warm my bed. More likely, she'd warmed my bed with one of my guards, traitorous wench." He looked away, and Thea could see the muscle in his jaw tense. "Better she have her claws in deGeoffrey's backside. I tire of wondering whose cream is on her lips-"
Thea cleared her throat, wishing she had not stumbled into whatever unresolved conflict existed between Nottingham and his leman. "I see-"
"Oh, spare me your wearisome observations!"
"I would not presume-"
"Of course you would. When have you not?"
"I will speak only on the matter of your injury, my lord. You've not been helped by your ride back. To try such a wound with a day in the saddle-" She bit off the admonishment about his frenzied display of choler. "But you're here now, and here you'll stay-resting calmly, if it be at all in my power-until you're well."
"And after that?"
"You may rant and rave to your heart's content, bay at the moon, if you wish, hang your faithless bedmate from the tallest tower in the castle. It's of no concern to me."
To her surprise, he laughed, swallowing a grimace at the discomfort it must have caused him. It was a change so sudden and so thorough that it startled her. Tension fled his shoulders and the knotted muscles of his back, as if he had finally managed to shrug off some unseen burden.
"Hang her?" A wicked smile of complicity brushed across his bearded lips. "Brilliant!"
"It was a jest, my lord."
"Indeed, Thea? Not one of the opinions you would never presume to utter disguised as wit?"
Thea met his dark-clouded eyes, now lit from behind with a spark of perverse amusement. Even his face was different, more relaxed than before, with a trace of eager expectation as he tempted her to respond. By the saints, the man's humor was black! More shocking still was the palliative effect it had on him.
"Ah, you're a delightful wench!" He grinned. "If you cannot cure me, at least you can entertain me. Although carefully. There are few people in Nottingham Castle who will appreciate your sharpness of tongue. Likely someone will carve it out the first time it vexes them."
"Who?" she braved, seeing the opportunity to distract him with the question as she gestured for him to lie back. She took her knife and cut through the bloody bandages.
"You mean if I don't get to you first? Well, Gisborne comes to mind. Although I doubt from that little spectacle in the bailey, he's content to stop at your tongue."
"Gisborne's a fool." She peeled away the linen strips and agrimony poultice.
"Sir Gisborne," he corrected her, "is my cousin and lieutenant of my guard. He demands more respect from his women."
"I am not his woman."
"Then perhaps you should explain that to him. He seemed to take a rather proprietary way with you."
Thea felt her cheeks warm, not knowing which was more dangerous: keeping pace with the Sheriff's banter-a game at which she was feeling increasingly inept-or continuing her examination of him. The wound had torn, as she feared, and was bleeding afresh. She took a clean linen square from her knotted kerchief of supplies, soaked it in wine, and dabbed at the ragged skin.
She forced herself to continue her part of the conversation, hoping her voice did not quiver as much as her hands. "And that disturbs you, my lord?"
"I know my cousin-a man of relentless pursuit, insatiable appetite-" He hissed at the sharp sting of wine and gritted his teeth. "A most ungentle way of appeasing that appetite-"
"Then it is a family trait, my lord?"
He looked at her sharply. For a moment, Thea feared-knew-she had committed a flagrant breach of whatever unwritten code ruled the Sheriff's game of words. She shut her mouth abruptly, wondering if it would be better to plead forgiveness or feign ignorance that she had insulted him or perhaps say nothing at all, since she had said too much already. He merely laughed, a series of deep-throated chuckles.
"We really must do something to correct this vicious rumor. These falsehoods spread about me." His voice dropped to a low whisper, as intent as the unwavering gaze that swept over her in a single, unsettling caress. "To think such lies have already reached as far as Edwinstowe. You must believe me, Thea. I am much maligned."
The privacy he had begged for seemed all around them now, the air close and far too warm. The silence expanded and contracted like the sputter of the tallow candle beside the bed.
"You're feverish," she said adamantly. The heat seemed to pour from him in waves; perspiration glistened across his face and pooled in the hollow of his throat. "I will give you something for that, and for the pain if you require it."
"None of your brew, woman," he cautioned. "I prefer strong ale. Or better yet, the wine you seem determined to pour on my gut. And perhaps-" He reached out and took a fold of her skirt in his hand. It was the faded, nondescript hue of all undyed wool, its fibers coarsely woven, worn to smoothness by repeated washing against creek stones. He brushed his fingertips along a raveled tear, across the darker shade of a square patch, and pulled more of the kirtle into his hand.
"You shall have rest, my lord," she replied, looking at his cloth-filled hand, then back to his teasing eyes. "Total immobility. A warm poultice, changed frequently. And, after the wound has drained and your fever gone, a seamstress to sew you back together again."
"Nothing more?" He pulled her skirt more tightly until no slack remained and the fabric was taut across her hips. "Maybe a lustful wench to warm my bed, after all?" A slow grin stole across his lips. "It would take my mind off the pain."
She yanked the cloth from his hand and stepped back out of his reach. "It would split you from gorge to gut," she promised, her rebuke a whisper of feigned seduction that mimicked his.
"Ah, indeed." His eyes were dark with lascivious glee, as if the notion thoroughly appealed to him. "Then, woman, you can heal me again."
~*~
He proved to be a temperamental patient at best
. He was ill enough, to be sure, but while he seemed aware of his physical limitations, it was clear he despised his weakness, and Thea for witnessing it.
By the evening of their arrival at Nottingham Castle, he was unquestionably feverish, and as delirious with rage as he was with fever. He cursed the woodsmen, Locksley in particular, swore at the girl who brought him trays of food, and sent Gisborne off with a string of epithets that effectively kept his cousin at a distance.
Nor did Thea escape his wrath. He forbade her to leave, but refused to permit her to care for him. If she tried to wipe his brow, he slapped her hand away. He sent a cup of chamomile tea sailing across the room. His fitful tossing upon the bed threatened to undo the new poultice and bandages Thea had applied and reduced the linens to sweat-soaked ropes entwined about his legs. When she tried to loosen the bedclothes and cover him more fully, he kicked out fiercely at her.
Pressed past her limit of tolerance, she swore softly at him, then caught herself with a quick gasp, horrified at what he'd provoked within her. One did not refer to the Sheriff of Nottingham as a bastard, even under the most trying of circumstances, and surely never to his face.
Recognizing the futility of a tug-of-war with the Sheriff over his own comfort, she left him to his misery and seated herself at the far corner of his alcove, where she watched the fever progress with crumbling detachment. Night, and the fever always came. It had been like this with Brand, fever making him a stranger to her, and she a stranger to him. When he died, raving at the last, she had been helpless to prevent it.
Thea shook her head fiercely, sweeping away the memories like unwanted cobwebs in her mind. The Sheriff was not Brand. How could she even compare the two?
Bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, she found herself pushed her into tension-filled vigilance by her surroundings. She started at the alien castle sounds. Armor and weaponry clanged outside the solar door even as the evening waned, and bawdy, drunken laughter filled the night. The occasional screech of a falcon in some other apartment jangled her already raw nerves even more than the creaking of carts outside or the rusty, metallic scraping of the portcullis on its chains.
When she could sit no longer, Thea paced the alcove to the recessed sitting area created by one of two arrow loops along the perimeter of the wall. She traced the cross-shaped opening with her fingertip, imagining the position an archer would take to defend the portal, then shivered at the blatant reminder. This was a fortress designed for defense, strong and impregnable against outside assault. Ironically, being within the dwelling lent her no sense of security. And the Sheriff-
Thea glanced around his chamber. If his solar were any indication, Lord Nottingham, for all his noble title and reputed wealth, was not a man given to much thought of comfort. Only a minimum of faded tapestries and drapes relieved the bleak texture of his stone and mortar surroundings. The rushes that covered his floor were stale, the furs spread out in front of the hearth trampled and muddied, and candles made of animal tallow spewed smoke more than flame. There was no evidence of books, no game boards for diversion, no crucifix for prayer.
Instead, a tangible sense of danger filled the void created by this Spartan existence. It permeated the room like the miasma of smoky air from the fire and the faint, but discernible, odor of foreign incense.
With her toe, Thea traced the trio of murder-holes in the floor, bewildered by the workings of the mind of a man who saw no incongruity in having such devices in his bedchamber. She wondered if the Sheriff felt imperiled in his own well fortified keep. Had he considered the possibility of a second arrow or blade or poison? Perhaps he had managed to push the thought of mortal danger aside as one would a bothersome insect, the threat as unavoidable in his position as a gnat on a summer's day. Maybe he thrived on the peril, fed off the sinister, ill-boding vapors that hung in the air. Maybe he created them.
By all accounts, he was a dangerous man. She knew his reputation, his methods and underhanded strategy, his ambition and renowned cruelty. She also knew that he was a powerful man, someone with authority so absolute that no one dared question him, until Robin. Yet she had been so foolish as to engage him in a veritable duel of wit and word since they first met. Why? He'd killed others with less provocation.
She stared at the scarred back turned toward her, and shivered-not with fear, but with sympathy and compassion that alarmed her even more, because they were so unfounded. Her throat tightened. God, he had as much as ordered her husband's death! She could ill afford to harbor such feelings for him; anything gentle, anything less than fear, than utter hatred, was treason to Brand's memory.
Thea walked back across the chamber, approaching the bed with a kind of numbed resolve. She touched his shoulder lightly, wondering if Nottingham slept and therefore might spare her the unbearable tension he seemed to generate whenever he was awake. When he did not move, she felt his cheek, just above the line where his precisely trimmed beard was beginning to blur from the past days' growth. The skin was alarmingly warm. He rolled to his back, his head turned away from her touch. He did not wake.
"So he has exhausted himself."
Startled, Thea turned toward the door. An older woman, wrapped in a linen headrail and soft buff tunic, stood just inside the solar.
"Aye, well, 'tis the only way-to fight with himself till the fight's gone out of him."
Thea turned back to the Sheriff. True, he did sleep more soundly at last, arms flung out carelessly at his sides, legs spread-eagled through the tangle of sheets. She could not help but notice that Nottingham required-or took-three times over the space her small bed had provided the night before. He was, indeed, a man given to expansiveness, in every form.
"And fight he has," Thea agreed.
"Will it be enough to save him?"
Thea glanced back over her shoulder. The woman stood rooted to the spot just inside the door where she had first appeared-a single soul, brazen enough to defy the Sheriff's orders. But it wasn't the woman's daring disobedience that struck Thea as unusual. Something in her voice...
Thea searched the older face, seeing careworn lines mixed equally with stubbornness. Clear, ageless, blue eyes crinkled at the corners, and silvery brows furrowed with uncertainty.
Why, the woman was concerned! No, more than that-worried. As impossible as it seemed, someone in Nottingham Castle actually cared for the fate of this man!
In the pause that followed, Thea knew the woman sensed her every failing. She wanted to confess that she was just a simple herb woman, that she could not save her own husband, whom she loved, much less Nottingham, whom she hated. Yet something in the woman's face allowed her no shortcomings.
She sat on the bed and mopped the Sheriff's sweat-drenched brow. "The man is too willful to die," she said, half-believing the words she offered as reassurance. "And I am too willful to let him."
"Aye," the older woman said, "I thought as much."
Thea looked up in time to see a satisfied smile erase the last trace of apprehension from the woman's face as she held up a basket.
"I know his orders, but someone needs to look after you, lamb, and he knows full well I don't turn tail and run on account of his barks. I brought you some bread and a good chunk of cheese and a skin of cold ale. And these linens for the monster himself, should you get soft-hearted and feel he's deserving of comfort."
Thea mumbled her thanks, but the woman backed out the door as quickly and silently as she had come.
Gratefully stretching the ache from her neck and shoulders, Thea rose and stepped down from the alcove to retrieve the basket and linens. She had not even asked the woman's name, yet she felt a strange admiration for the servant whose caring and common sense overrode the Sheriff's ultimatums.
"Monster," she had called him, but with obvious misplaced affection.
Thea looked up at the sleeping alcove where the Sheriff sprawled among his sheets. He did not appear particularly maleficent, unless, of course, her judgment had fled completely. He was, she was certain, mor
e than the evil madman the villagers talked about, more complex and intricately wrought than John or even Robin could understand.
She had never known a man so vehemently determined to control himself and those about him, and so compelled to shroud his abysmal failure with violent rage. Did he mean to make of his anger, his intimidation, and his ruthlessness a defense more impenetrable than that of his castle?
And if so, exactly what did he hope to defend?
~*~
"Who the hell do you think you are, boy?"
He saw the gloved hand, large, clenched, raised, and knew he would be struck. His mind was already far away, remembering his hard-won victory over Guy, hearing the clash of their swords, feeling his chest tighten and his lungs scream for air. He had never bested him... Guy... the lord's son...not once in seven years, but now Guy's sword clattered to the ground. His cousin had conceded, turning empty palms to the air, earning but a wrathful glare from his father. Lord Gisborne would not strike his son, but he-
He had dared too much in winning. He saw the lord's dark visage, like a warning fragment of some portentous nightmare, and then he felt the impact against his cheek. The second blow caught his lip. He smelled the faint aroma of leather as the gloved fist drove him stumbling backward, felt the crash of the timber floor force his breath from him. He scrambled away, afraid now, hands and feet unable to make purchase among the rushes. Clumsily, he rolled to his knees, tasting blood, watching it splatter onto the straw...
Onto the snow. He counted time with the rhythmic plops...one droplet...two...blotting out all else. He was already frozen, his new tunic torn from his shoulders, sagging low over his hips only because they had not cut his belt from him when they had robbed him of his sword. His skin was blanched white from the cold. Bloodless. Even his wrists, where the ropes bound him, bled no longer. He did not feel that sting or the torn muscles in his shoulders when they had jerked his arms overhead and left him hanging there, a barely living effigy in the oak. His mind seemed separate from the sizzle of pain across his back. He counted the cracks in the air, marveling at the echoes made in the silent, icy world. Those, too, he measured, for it was easier to listen than to feel. A single thread of fire sliced across his bared shoulders, angrier than the rest, a viper's tongue of flame that licked across his skin and lanced into his left side, under his rib-
